


It's Been so Long, Darling

by Hedgi



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: F/M, all aboard the pain train, look the names of these characters are ridiculous they have too many, prompted fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-25
Updated: 2016-01-25
Packaged: 2018-05-16 03:51:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5812753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hedgi/pseuds/Hedgi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The life where Chay-ara and Khufu where the Boardmans was a hard one, longer than many, and it was a good one. But nothing lasts, not with Savage hunting them. Still, they hoped that this time, with someone more than themselves to protect, they might win. <br/>Spoilers for the pilot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's Been so Long, Darling

**Author's Note:**

> For Cross, on TVtropes, who requested a fic about Aldus Boardman and the lifetime the Hawks were his parents.
> 
> I regret nothing.

Edith’s feet ached, but then, they always did, a consequence of cramming her feet into too small shoes all her life. And maybe, she thought, a few lives before that, too. She was only 32, but her body felt as old as her spirit some days, centuries and centuries old, and worn, and tired. She was tired of so many things, the hard labor that was all anyone’d pay her to do, the way her roughened hands caught on fabric, the fear, the running. But she and Khufu--Joe--had learned from their memories and mistakes, two hundred lives worth of them. They couldn’t stay still, couldn’t stay in one place, or the Nothing Man with the empty eyes, the savage monster that ripped them from each other time and again, would find them. And as hard as it was, at times, to keep living, as easy as it might have been simply to die again, and again, and be someone knew in a world hopefully a little less torn apart by violence and prejudice... she couldn’t. Not this time. This time, she and her winged prince, they had to live.

They’d been traveling since she Emerged--she was first, this time, but he’d followed soon after she showed up in his town, drawn there by memories and something more--God, gods, or fate she didn’t know. When her wings had unfurled, the light in his eyes was more than wonder. Three days later, as memories filtered in, they’d found a preacher, gotten married, and fled, never staying in one place for long. Travel was easier in this life, scraping together pennies, than it had been a few earlier, looking over their shoulders for more than just Hath-Set. In the throes of the War, it was a little easier to hide, just a few more brown faces in a sea of those searching out work and a place to call home. And it helped, some, Edith figured, that their enemy searched for two, not three. Joe had worried that a child might slow them down, but the first time that tiny baby had opened his eyes--so wide and dark like his mama’s, Joe’d known that he loved this little one as much as any being who’d ever walked or flown.

It was Edith who’d named him, wings wrapped like a blanket around him one winter night. “Aldus,” she’d said, soft. “His name’s Aldus.”  
Joe’d frowned, but couldn’t deny her that. “What’s it mean?”  
“Who says it means anything? I like the sound of it.”  
Joe’d had the last laugh, though, a few years later when he’d gotten nightwork at a public library. One dusty book claimed the name meant “of the old house.” He’d woken them all with that, and as Edith put the chipped plates on the table, Aldus had asked why it was funny, he wasn’t a house, they’d never had a house.  
“Chay,” Joe’d said, a sudden shake to his head. But Edith had met his clear eyes.  
“Aldus, it means that you’re from an old family,” she started.  
He was only four, but Joe and Edith had raised no fool, he was bright as the stars he liked to watch, when they were out of cities. “It’s just you and Poppa, though.”  
“Joe, he needs to know,” Edith said. “Aldus, your Poppa and I are very old. We look young, but we’ve been alive--in a way-- for a very, very long time. And that’s why we keep moving, why we don’t have a house or nothin like that. No pictures, no letters, it’s why we don’t go to church like the Walkers downstairs do. There’s a very bad man who’s been chasing us.” There was no need, then, to tell him the worst of it. That would be later.  
He was eight when they told him all the truth, and that they all shared a bed wasn’t because they were poor for once, but because he was scared. long into that night, over his shut-tight eyes and dark curls, Edith and Joe had talked, wondering if telling the worst of it, that it wasn’t that they never got old but that they’d died, had been wise. But this was their life, a hard one, a scared one, and Joe said, if he was to stay safe, he needed to know.  
~~*~~ * ~~  
Never again did Aldus complain about moving, and never, ever again did he brag to his class about his Mama who had been to egypt a long, long time ago. If there was more fear in him, if he searched shadows more diligently, he didn’t say, but Edith and Joe saw, and worried.  
“He won’t get you,” Joe promised one night when Aldus was nearing ten. “I promise, my little fledgeling. I’ll keep you and your Mama safe.”  
“Will I ever grow wings like you?” Aldus asked. “So I can fly away, too, if he tries?”  
“I don’t know,” Joe said. “Maybe. Maybe not. But we’ll keep you safe.” He didn’t say that he hoped Aldus never grew wings, so that if Savage ever caught them again, the child could hide away somewhere, live a normal life, safe. If he had power like Chay-ara and Khufu--Edith and Joe--what was to stop the man Savage from discovering him? And though Joe knew Edith was dead certain that this time things would be different, deep in his gut he wondered if it would be. Ten years since Emerging they’d run and hid, and that was the longest he could remember them making it.  
Edith told Aldus stories, all the little things she remembered, all the lives she could recall, which was around 200 of them. Aldus wrote some down, before Joe had warned him such things were dangerous, might lead Savage to them if anyone ever found it. Edith had nodded, a dim flash of memory catching at her, a town in flames, a library burning. Joe filled in the gaps though, stories shared out over dinners or breakfasts, depending when he got home from work. If nothing else, knowing might keep their child safe. And it was as much his right as theirs, to know the history.  
~~ *~~ *~~ *

Aldus was ten years old when all those stories stopped being just whispered words. They were moving again, on up to the Canadian border, about as far from their Carolina home as possible. Edith’s feet ached, and Joe’s back muscles cramped, but they were together, sharing out a birthday treat--spice cake and cola drinks-- on a cloth spread out across a motel room floor. And despite all of it, how tired they all were of running and hiding and the sneers of rich folk and the fear that lay as close to bones and feathers as love did--Edith knew that this was what she wanted from a life. This was worth trading silks and statues and respect, which had never brought any of them safety.  
She knew the feeling as well as any mother, as well as any who had been hunted-- sometimes Edith felt more kinship with hares and deer than with hawks, the feeling of a world about to shatter, danger coming on like a summer storm. Glancing at Joe, she knew he felt it too, the warning signs they’d spent the last decade fleeing from. There could be no flight that would save them this time.  
“Aldus,” she whispered, reaching out a hand. “I need you to be very brave for Mama and Poppa. Remember everything we’ve taught you, all the stories, can you do that?”  
He nodded, uncertain, trembling, his hand so small. His eyes were huge and dark and scared, mirroring her own. “I...I think so, but why--”  
“There’s no time, baby.” Edith scanned the room, spotting a closet. She flung the door open and took the quilt from the floor, bundling it around him. “Stay in here, don’t come out for anything, no matter what. No matter what you hear, don’t you come out.”  
Joe was there, wings already full under the dim light. “Mind your Mama, my little hawk. You mustn’t make a sound. Chay-ara, I’ll lead him off, buy you and--”  
“No. Khufu, it’s too late.” It was, and all three of them and the man on the stairs knew it. Edith pressed her hand to her child’s face, wet with salt-tears. “I’ll come to you. If something--if something happens, I’ll find you just as soon as I can. It may be a long time, so remember how much we love you.”  
She let her own wings unfurl and closed the door with her face angel bright with that love and protection. With one hand, she reached for Joe--Khufu. It had been a hard life, but long compared to others, and good. One way or another, tonight the running would stop.  
The thin motel room door burst open.  
~~ *~~ * ~~  
Aldus’s belly growled and his arm ached where he’d crammed his own wrist into his mouth to stop from crying aloud. But for all that, the stiffness in his back, the numbness in his legs, he did not move. Mama would come back. Poppa would come back. This time, things would have to be different, this time, they’d win, because this time they were his parents.  
Hours and hours later, the door opened, but it was not Mama or Poppa, just a sad looking man in a uniform, who bent down close and lifted him.  
“No, I gotta wait, I gotta--” Aldus stopped. He could see the figures on the ground, sheets like ghosts draped over them. He had known, distantly, from the sounds his hands and the quilt couldn’t block out. Somehow, it hadn’t seemed real.  
When questioned, Aldus Remembered his Poppa’s Lessons, his Mama’s Stories. he couldn’t talk about a man who walked through time, killing his parents again and again, couldn’t tell anyone what he’d heard--they’d call him crazy, send him away like a goat set out for slaughter. No, he’d have to wait for Mama and Poppa to come back. They would. He knew they would. He held to Mama’s wedding band and the one family photo, from the Fair, he hummed Poppa’s favorite songs and waited.  
They didn’t come.  
They didn’t come.  
They didn’t come.  
Anyone else might have left memory blur, called it trauma and hide away from the mystery. But Aldus had seen his parent’s wings, his mother’s smile, his father’s calloused hands. the Nothing man had taken them from him, but Aldus could not let their memory be stolen, too, not when the last things they’d asked was to remember. So he waited, remembering and remembering and remembering. They didn’t come back --  
\--until they did.  
She was younger than he’d ever seen her, his mother. Still, Aldus knew her. He could not forget her eyes, so very like his, full of things unremembered: past lives, old dreams...him.  
But she’d come back. They were both here, looking confused and hesitant, and it was all he could do not to rocket to his feet and embrace them both as he had done as a child.  
“You,” he said, and there was nothing else for it. “Both of you.”  
“You know who we are?” the question nearly broke his heart, but Aldus was old, now, and had heard so much more than screams from beyond a closet door. They had told him their stories. Perhaps this was why, so he could tell his parents the stories back. He had remembered, and they would too.  
If not in this life...


End file.
